This Blog is created to stress the importance of Peace as an environmental directive. “I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.” – Harry Truman
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The one year anniversary of SuperStorm Sandy is upon us. The storm formed on October 22nd and make landfall on October 29th. The Secretary of the Interior has awarded monies to initiate storm protection projects along the Atlantic Coastline in noting the horrible damage the country sustained last year.

Last year, union membership declined to 11.3 percent from 11.8 percent of all workers, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Wednesday. Unions lost about 400,000 members last year, lowering their ranks to about 14.4 million members.

This is a level not seen since the 1930s, or the last time America was in a Great Depression.

About half of the loss came as cash-strapped governments cut workers, including police, fire fighters and teachers. As for the private sector, nonunion jobs are coming back and union jobs are not as companies recover from the Great Recession.

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, lamented the latest declines in a string going back to at least the 1980s....

There is this really strange dialogue that exists in the USA and that is that unions are bad for the American economy. There are those that want the American public to believe the unions are stronger than government and taking over the country. It is all lies and Americans need to realize their pay rates rely on competition in the workplace (what other companies are paying their workers for the same jobs) and the minimum wage. Those are the two greatest factors in pay rates. It is time to stop denying the need for unions in the USA, again!

I simply love this graph. It and the article written in the Wall Street Journal is manipulative and full of lies.

...This means government is the main playing field of modern unionism, which explains why the AFL-CIO and SEIU have become advocates for higher taxes and government expansion in cities, states and Washington. Unions once saw their main task as negotiating a bigger share of an individual firm's profits. Now the movement's main goal is securing a larger share of the overall private economy's wealth, which means pitting government employees against middle-class taxpayers....

Firstly, there is no such thing as modern unionism. Unions have been unions since the day they were organized. As a matter of fact most of the unions that exist today existed 50 years ago. There is no one stabilizing economic factor in the USA as consistent in beliefs and benefits as labor unions. And that is economic benefit. The good wages and benefit packages for union members directly interprets into economic growth.Secondly, the number of public sector unions has not increased and neither have their member numbers, except, for new hires with expanded need in education due to increases in population. The real dynamic at play and why the USA economy cannot recover is that four decades of Republican leadership, beginning with Ronald Reagan. The article was written in 2009 because there was now a Democratic President in the White House and Wall Street was shaking in their boots because of the collapse of 2008 and the fact Labor Unions would become stronger with a functional NLRB.

Source: U.S. Department of Commerce-Bureau of Economic AnalysisThere is a direct relationship in the fall of union membership in the USA and the loss of economic growth.DIRECT RELATIONSHIP.The Middle Class is the strength of every country. That was EVERY COUNTRY. When a country lacks a strong Middle Class the economy is stagnant and dependent on trade with other wealthier nations to sustain it. The prime example is China. What Wall Street did was completely immoral, stupid and self-destructive. Rather than going to China, building enterprises to staff with Chinese workers and PAY THEM A LIVING WAGE, it paid poverty wages and expected the difference in Chinese and American Labor costs to not effect the profits of the company.As American wages fell and a Wall Street dependent on the economic engine of the USA the demand for products declined as well as the price Americans could pay. That was COULD PAY. What entered into the picture was the change of the American economy from vibrant to impoverished. Since the decline in unions in the USA and because of Wall Street Draconianism with CEOs that can't deliver the goods to stockholders because they impoverished their own market base, Walmart became the global answer to managing the populous.Quality went out the window. All that was important was supply. Name brand recognition has been obscure and American industrial production waned. It is time for the American Unions to take back the job place. They need to go where workers are most abundant and begin again. If the strength of unions continue to diminish the American economy will be a thing of the past. Unions are the single greatest hope the USA has to return to a growing economy with quality of life for it's citizens.

Wall Street simply doesn't get it. They have ruined the economy of the USA by outsourcing jobs rather than growing jobs in foreign nations. They removed the economy in the USA to cheaper work pools. At one time the jobs at McDonald's belonged to teens in high school, now because of the scoured American landscape these jobs are worked by head of households.
The jobs actions are not going to abate, but, only increase. There is no other choice for American workers but to fight for a living wage. Ms. Salgado is speaking for millions of Americans, not just herself. She is not insubordinate so much as being a leader and a spokes person for the UNHEARD.The Republicans like to say the American people in need of food stamps and Medicaid are lazy people. That is not the case. The problem is there are less and less good paying jobs. It is no different than the Governors balancing their budgets on the backs of unions and teachers, the more the states cut into wages the poorer the overall economy becomes in the USA.

By Mae Anderson

Associated Press

Published: Monday, Oct. 21 2013 11:43 a.m. MDT

Updated: Monday, Oct. 21 2013 11:43 a.m. MDT

...The company (click here) announced the changes to its popular low-priced menu on Thursday, the same day that the world's biggest burger chain reported that its third-quarter profit rose 5 percent as it benefited from a Monopoly promotion in the U.S. and strength in the U.K. and Russia.

The company plans to introduce some $2 and $5 options on the Dollar Menu, which currently features things like the Grilled Onion Cheddar Burger and a McChicken sandwich for a buck. The new "Dollar Menu and More" will include items including $2 burgers and a $5 20-piece chicken McNuggets....

...3.Action Group members are committed to the sovereignty, independence, national unity and territorial integrity of Syria.They are determined to work urgently and intensively to bring about an end to the violence and human rights abuses and thelaunch of a Syrian led political process leading to a transition that meets the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people and enables them in dependently and democratically to determine their own future....

The Russians are insisting the Geneva Communique of 2012 be the basis of the proceedings. There was global support for the Communique of 2012; I can't imagine anyone would be disregarding it's importance.

China praised the Communique for being balanced.

Updated: 2012-07-02 09:28(Xinhua)

DAMASCUS - A Syrian parliamentarian (click here)said the new plan put forward by
the Geneva action group meeting reinforced the six-point peace plan
brokered by international special envoy Kofi Annan, adding that the
meeting's final communique was balanced.

The action group meeting on Syria reinforced Annan's six-point peace
plan, Omar Ossi, a parliamentarian representing the Syrian Kurds, told
Xinhua in an interview on Saturday.

An action group comprising of world powers met Saturday in Geneva and
agreed upon a roadmap that hammered out a process for a Syrian-led
transition to end the 16-month-long conflict but didn't stipulate the
ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

A joint communique issued after the meeting said that the global
community wished to see "an end to the violence and human rights abuses"
and that the Syrian people enjoyed rights to " independently and
democratically determine their own future."

The meeting specified the steps and measures to secure full implementation of Annan's peace plan for Syria....

The Guardian is reporting the plans to end chemical weapons in Syria is on track.

The world's chemical weapons watchdog says it is confident that Syria
will meet an important early milestone in its disarmament, the 1
November deadline for destroying all equipment used in the production
and mixing of poison gases and nerve agents.

Michael Luhan, a spokesman for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said the Syrian government had provided complete co-operation with the 27 weapons inspectors in the country.

Luhan
said the inspectors had visited 18 of the 23 chemical weapons sites
declared by Damascus, and that a complete, official, inventory of all
Syria's chemical weapons, munitions, and production facilities, was
expected to be delivered to the OPCW headquarters in the Hague in the
next 24 hours.

Furthermore, he said Syria was expected to meet
next Friday's deadline laid down by the OPCW executive council for the
destruction of all equipment involved in the production and mixing of
chemical weapons as well machinery used for filling munitions with
mustard gas, sarin or other poison agents....

The United Nations is receiving plenty of help with the weapons destruction from the USA and Russia. There haven't been anymore releases of these weapons noted since the diplomatic efforts has gone forward.

Diplomatic missions often run into problems in reaching consensus. Russia is noting the Friends of Syria are changing direction.

"We have to state that contrary to previously held
understandings on how to resolve the crisis in Syria the final
document issued after the meeting attempts to revise the key
elements of the 30 June 2012 Geneva communique," Russian
Foreign Ministry's spokesman said in a statement.

The Russian Foreign Ministry also asserted: “It is this
document that has been recognized as the only platform to achieve
a political settlement in Syria and has recently been approved by
UN Security Council Resolution 2118.”

The spokesman states that prior to London’s Wednesday meeting of
11 foreign ministers of the ‘Friends of Syria’ group, Russia was
told that “the discussions there will be held exclusively on
the basis of the Geneva communique.

Moscow believes that the discussions violated the diplomatic
effort and is seen as “an attempt to revise the communique
according to the political needs [of the Syrian opposition],"
to create a “regime change” in Damascus. Lukashevich also
said that the London communique contained a "poorly hidden
threat" of armed intervention in Syria....

It wouldn't be that the Friends of Syria are picking up clues from Saxby Chambliss in the USA, could it?

Posted: 2:47 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2013By Jim Galloway

...The ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee remains
convinced that Obama took the wrong path when he decided against a
one-time air-strike against Syria – which was opposed by many Democrats
as well as Republicans, in D.C. and here. Said Chambliss:

“There
was no doubt in anybody’s mind who had been involved in the
discussions, and inside the Situation Room, and inside the classified
briefings, that we were going to take a strike. There were options out
there.

“I thought he should have made the decision early
on. That was his first mistake. Previous commanders-in-chief did it
quickly. Get it over with, move on, and we’re talking about something
else.

“Here, when he delayed his decision, in effect, and
then changed his mind, it was pretty clear that the Russians and
everybody in the Middle East part of the world saw a weakness. And that
weakness was really exposed when he wound up going to the negotiating
table with the Russians.

“So, yeah, I think this outcome
is much worse than if we had gone in and fired a few missiles. Nobody
wants to see collateral damage. But the damage we would have caused
would have been minimal – and it would have been over with. And [Assad]
would have capitulated if we had done it right. So, yeah, I think the
result is much worse than it would have been.”

Senator Chambliss has one year left in his federal office. It is unfortunate he wants to take leave of propriety and do little more than war mongering in that final year.